


And we're starting at the end

by narceus



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Gen, Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, Slightly Sci-Fi, Trauma Recovery, Winter Soldier AU, canon-based universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 08:43:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2222742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narceus/pseuds/narceus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are moments, more than there were a month ago, when Stiles sounds almost like himself.</p><p>  <i>“Curquitos, definitely.”  Stiles brandishes the food in his hand, swiped yet again out of Scott’s cabinet, as evidence.</i></p><p>  <i>“Taquitos made with curry and mystery meat?” Scott asks.  “<i>That’s</i> your pick for the greatest invention of the past eighty years?”</i></p><p>Yeah, this is Stiles <i>exactly</i> like himself.  Exactly like the guy Scott’s known how to read for close to his entire life.  Stiles has always, always derailed and distracted from conversations he didn’t want to have in <i>exactly</i> the same way.</p><p> </p><p>(but God, who wants to talk about spending eighty years as a brainwashed, one-armed assassin, anyway?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	And we're starting at the end

**Author's Note:**

> Holy _cow_ , writing this fic was something else.
> 
> About a month and a half ago, Lydia ([scottinpanties](http://scottinpanties.tumblr.com/)) came to me and asked if I could please, please write a super-quick pinch hit for the Scott/Stiles Reverse Bang, like 5k would be plenty, just whatever I could churn out in a week or so. I said _sure_.
> 
> As you can see, this is not 5k. It is also very definitely not a week later. I'm not really sure if one excuses the other, but, well, here we are. Happy Birthday, Lydia. Have a story.
> 
>  
> 
> I need to acknowledge the _hell_ out of the artist from my original prompt ([thebarbershopquartet](http://thebarbershopquartet.tumblr.com/) on tumblr), who drew [this fantastic piece](http://thebarbershopquartet.tumblr.com/post/94033844979/scott-stiles-winter-soldier-au-for) and probably thought they were completely abandoned at the end of the challenge. You gave great inspiration and I hope you enjoy the story.
> 
> Acknowledgements go, as always, to my most-dear [into-the-weeds](http://into-the-weeds.tumblr.com/), who as always let me write the whole fic at her in chat format and is the only reason I think I'm a good writer some days. And to Lydia, who, after getting me into this, beta'ed the whole thing and never once nagged at me about being slow as hell. Also I need to thank the hell out of Dea ([tofixtheshadows](http://tofixtheshadows.tumblr.com/)), who still hasn't even _seen_ this story but listened to me whining about it for a month, and provided a _ton_ of help and inspiration in the form of music and gifsets.
> 
> In case you're curious about some of that inspiration, a lot of it is up at my tumblr tagged as [ref for professional ashes of roses](http://c-is-for-circinate.tumblr.com/tagged/ref-for-professional-ashes-of-roses), which is a reference to this story's working title. The final title comes from 'Alone Together' by Fall Out Boy, which is an excellent song all around.

The moon’s full. Same moon, and it even looks the same, mostly, what he can see of it between the branches of the half-grown pine grove on the roof of the Daily Beacon building. There’s not as much smog as Scott would’ve expected from 2093.

“ _In position_.” Malia’s voice is just a little staticky. The sound receiver is a tiny dot slipped under the skin in the opening to Scott’s ear, so not even another werewolf could hear the transmissions from more than an inch away, and it’s a lot more advanced than anything Scott’s team used to have but it’s still about ten years out of date. Even fancy futuristic technology doesn’t age that well.

“Same,” Scott murmurs. “B-team?”

“ _Ready,_ ” Liam says. Scott’s over expecting to hear Isaac’s voice, really. Liam’s a good kid, and he’s Scott’s in a way no one, not even his old team, ever really was before. The rest of the B-team is steady.

“On my mark,” Scott says, dropping down into a crouch. He lets the seconds tick off in his head, picturing the layout of the target one more time, and then takes off in a sprint straight for the far edge of the roof.

“Mark!” Scott launches himself over the edge of the roof, sixty-five stories high and diving forward, almost flying across the gap between buildings at the top running speed an alpha werewolf can attain over a thirty-yard sprint. He ducks his head just in time to crash through the plate glass window.

There’s a tiny tinkle of glass on the edge of his hearing, a second window breaking much more quietly. Malia can be subtle, sometimes, when the job calls for it.

Liam and the beta team are in the stairwell, ready to storm the penthouse apartment as soon as Scott gives the word. The wendigo in the living room turns around to face Scott, her lips already pulling back in a razor-toothed snarl.

She lunges, and Scott drops down, goes for her legs, ignores the tug of the moon that tells him to slash at her throat and taste her blood. Malia’s rounding up the others. He can hear the thud of a body against a wall just a room away.

Give or take about eighty years in a coma, some things never change.

...

It’s a pretty easy fight, all told. Mason takes a sharp set of wendigo teeth to the arm, and Liam snarls, gold-eyed and protective, when Garrett tries to take a closer look at it. It’s only Liam’s sixth full moon, and his control’s not perfect yet. Probably Scott’s forgetting all kinds of things Talia used to teach him. He’s not sure. He’s never been an alpha before.

Liam’s okay, though. Scott dresses Mason’s arm, and Malia helps Garrett and Violet wrestle their wendigo prisoners into Allison’s cells, and everything runs at least as smoothly as Scott’s old team ever could’ve managed.

They’ve been operating a little under strength for the past month or so, while Allison recovers. Humans don’t get over stab wounds as easily as werewolves do, and Scott’s not about to let her take any chances. They’ve been doing okay, though, even without their archer. They’re okay.

 _Scott’s_ okay.

People recover, after their loved ones die. Scott’s had over a year to figure out how to deal with it. He found his mom’s grave. He tracked down Boyd and Erica’s grandchildren.

He cried on Lydia--and god, Lydia looks so ancient and frail that Scott was afraid to even hug her those first few days, when he realized she was the only thing he had left. Lydia hugged him in her skinny arms and didn’t say anything when Scott mussed up her perfect elegant silver hair sobbing into it, and eventually Scott stopped crying.

It’s been fourteen months, and nearly everybody Scott loves is dead, except that’s not true any more. He has these people, now: Allison, who needed a partner to help her fight the war that’s been raging in Beacon Hills for well longer than Scott’s been alive. Liam, and that strange new alpha-beta connection Scott’s never had before with _anybody_. Malia, with her own messed-up past and jumbled memories, never asking about where Scott comes from so long as he doesn’t ask about her. He’d fight or die for any one of them, and that’s as close as Scott can imagine getting to something like _home_.

“Go home,” he tells Mason firmly, when the arm is disinfected and bandaged up tight. Then, to Liam: “Are you going with him?”

“Um.” Liam glances between Mason and Scott and the window and back again, hesitant, nervous. “Do you think I should?”

“Go,” Scott says. “You’re fine.”

It’s 3 AM, Scott’s team is safe, and everybody’s fine. Scott ducks out the door of the office after Liam and Mason and heads for the stairs going down. It’s been enough for one night.

Scott carries his ghosts on his shoulders, and that’s okay, because what else do you do with ghosts? You mourn the dead, and you carry on in their name, and there’s just nothing else to do. Isaac and Laura and Derek are sixty years in the ground. Cora wasn’t here tonight to watch his back, and he’s never going to get advice from Talia or Alan again. And with all of that, Scott can keep going somehow anyway, except--

Except.

Scott has to go all the way down to the ground floor to get his motorbike. There's a loading dock on the south side of the building where he can get out onto actual street level. It'll be dawn in a couple of hours, but it's a good night for a ride. Scott's got something to do.

Stiles. That's what's missing. Stiles is supposed to be at Scott’s side. That’s the one he can’t get over.

It’s the one death he does remember. Stiles died in his arms, seventy-nine years ago. Everybody else lived and fought and died while Scott slept peacefully on in Lydia’s back bedroom. Stiles is the one Scott was actually there for, in the dark on the forest floor with the fumes from the basilisk’s dripping venom making his head swim so bad Scott’s never been able to remember what happened next.

It took two days for Scott to find the basilisk again, all by himself. Two days, and Scott shouldn’t be _alive_ after that fight. He hadn’t cared if he was. Blood running down his face and venom scorching through his veins, dragging him down into endless black, once the thing was dead Scott hadn’t cared about very much at all.

He avenged Stiles, and because of that he wasn’t there to protect or avenge Talia, or Isaac, or Laura. Stiles should be the one death out of all of them that Scott has some kind of closure for, right?

But no. _That’s_ the thing that keeps tripping Scott up. The whole world’s tilted on its axis, and Scott can keep going, one foot in front of the other--but Stiles isn’t next to him and that’s the part he doesn’t know how to handle.

Because Stiles isn't dead. Scott’s memories, everything that happened that night, are lies. Stiles didn’t die there, and Stiles survived the past eighty years, alive, just like Scott did.

Stiles isn’t dead. He just isn’t here.

…

Beacon Hills had a population boom sometime in the 30’s, apparently, when the floods took out half the California coast. It spread out, took over five smaller neighboring towns and engulfed half the preserve. Scott can only imagine what Talia would’ve said to that.

Later on, the environmentalist movement pulled it back in. Now the city--it’s a real city, not just a small town pretending--is a forest of high rises roofed with an actual forest, surrounded by the half-demolished ruins of mini-malls and housing development ghost towns.

The forest is reclaiming the rubble, bit by bit. There are new saplings growing from the foundation of whatever building got put up on the site of the old pack house. Even Allison doesn’t know what it used to be. Lydia said it might’ve been a holoplex, and then changed the subject. Scott let her.

Eighty years. Time moves on.

“Missed you tonight,” Scott says.

“You know, I think this is a white oak?” Stiles doesn’t turn around. “Not even native to this state. Figures.”

He still _sounds_ like Stiles, rapt in his new interesting fact that’s caught his attention. He looks a little different, maybe. Maybe as old as his late twenties, in good light, when Scott can see his face. In the dim, pre-morning light, Scott can’t even see anything special about the hand Stiles is running over the sapling’s bark, holding a leaf carefully between two fingers for a closer look. Someone who didn’t know them at all might even think this was normal.

He heard Scott coming, of course. He probably heard Scott’s bike from a mile and a half away. It’s been weird getting used to Stiles with near-werewolf hearing, especially because Stiles never used to seem to pay attention to the senses he had. But he heard Scott coming, and he waited until Scott showed up.

“How bad is that?” Scott asks.

“Do I look like an ecologist?” Stiles lets go of the leaf between his metal fingers and turns towards Scott, obviously, exaggeratedly relaxed, like he’s got something to prove. “Can’t see Talia liking it much, though.”

“Probably not,” Scott agrees.

Scott’s been here almost a dozen times since he woke up. One of those times was with Lydia, more than a year ago, and the second was by himself. The rest have all been within the past five weeks, looking for Stiles.

He’d really like to think Stiles keeps coming here because this is somewhere familiar, but there’s not much left here for either of them to really feel familiar with. He’d really like to think Stiles isn’t just torturing himself.

Other people have done that to him enough.

“Do you want to tear it out?” The sapling’s not even half as big around as Scott’s wrist. Scott could easily--

 _Either_ of them could easily pull it out of the ground. It’s weird things that keep slipping Scott’s memory. He knows how strong Stiles is now, how fast he is in a fight, how far his still-technically-human reflexes have been pushed. Scott’s got the memory of half a dozen near-fatal wounds to remind him of that. It’s little things, like opening jars or whatever, where Scott keeps forgetting.

“Nah, leave it,” Stiles says. “Scott, what are you doing here?”

Scott was willing to talk about trees all night if Stiles had wanted, but he shrugs. “Like I said, we could’ve used you tonight,” he says. “I wanted to see what you were doing that was so much more important than a mission to clear out a nest of wendigos.”

“Oh, I was super-busy,” Stiles says. “Not being invited on your mission really takes up a lot of time.”

“Seriously?” Scott asks. “I asked you. I asked you last time I saw you, which was _three days ago_ , before you disappeared again.”

“Your betas going to relax if I’m around?” Stiles asks. “Your coyote?”

“They’ll get used to you,” Scott says, for the thousandth time. “And they’re not my betas. Liam’s my beta. The rest of the team is all human.”

“Alpha McCall,” Stiles says, just enough mockery to make Scott flush. “Hey, no, I mean it, red’s a good look for you.”

Scott didn’t ask to wake up this way. Stiles probably didn’t ask to wake up missing an arm. He deals.

“We were talking about you,” Scott points out instead.

“Yeah,” says Stiles. “Hey, I’m gonna take off.” Scott wishes he could feel surprised.

“Where?” Scott asks, not that he’s expecting much of an answer.

“Don’t know,” Stiles says. “I’ll call in a week if I don’t wake up dead.”

He turns around, back towards the crumbled, torn-up asphalt that used to be a road, and Scott steps forward instantly. “Hey, wait, you’re going _now_?” he asks.

The sun’s not even half up. They’ve been standing around in half-shadow that Scott’s eyes can pierce as easily as daylight, and he forgets, sometimes, that Stiles can do the same thing. Sometimes he forgets that Stiles shouldn’t be able to. Neither one of them is squinting, but it can’t be past 4:00 in the morning.

“Yeah, I’m not really big on the ‘sleeping’ thing these days,” Stiles says. “Did too much of that in the past eight decades or so.”

Stiles has always made sarcastic comments about the things Scott never wanted to say. It’s Stiles. That’s how he is. He’s just sharper with it, now.

“Okay,” Scott says, because fighting with Stiles about this isn’t going to make it any better. Stiles is a much better fighter now. Scott takes a step back. “Call me,” he says. “Promise.”

“Of course,” Stiles says.

Scott holds on to that, because even with all the ways Stiles has changed, he hasn’t lied to Scott yet.

…

Scott’s best friend was dead. It was truth. it was Scott’s reality, and then he blinked his eyes for seventy-nine years and then _everybody_ was dead, and Stiles too. And that was _reality_ for fourteen straight months. Everyone but Lydia who Scott had ever known, ever loved, was dead for fourteen months. Stiles was dead for two days longer than anyone else, plus the whole eighty years Scott didn’t even remember.

And then Allison was bleeding on the floor of her apartment while Lydia put pressure on the wound and Scott took off after the black-clad assassin that stabbed her, out the window and up the maintenance stairs towards the rooftop, and nothing would ever be the same again.

“What the hell is a Stiles?” the assassin asked.

Allison’s blood was spattered across his shirt, barely darker than the matte black of his whole outfit. His eyes were lined coal. Before Scott had grabbed ahold of his mask, not a speck of skin had shone too pale in the dark, ready to give him away.

Scott had heard his heartbeat, of course. But against a human like Allison, the assassin would’ve been all but invisible.

The assassin. The man with the metal arm, who Liam and Mason had barely escaped in one piece. The man with a gun very suddenly in his metal hand, barrel pointed square and center at Scott’s chest.

The man whose face, whose heartbeat, whose very _scent_ Scott knew better than anyone else in the universe. No shapeshifter could make a copy that good.

“Stiles, it’s _me_ ,” Scott said, and the assassin they’d been chasing for more than a week, who was Stiles, Stiles and nobody else, raised his lip in a snarl. Scott was running before he even realized he knew what Stiles was about to do next, running at top werewolf speed but Stiles was already up both feet on the ledge of the roof and all he had to do was take a step backwards and fall.

Scott hit the edge of the roof four heart-stopping seconds later and caught himself with his claws just in time to keep from going over too. He stared down, a thousand-foot drop to the ground crossed with dozens of pedestrian bridges and tramways. The side of the building was covered in ivy, little ledges and inset niches full of bushes and trees, a waterfall spilling from three jutting fountainheads halfway down and falling all the way to the ground below. There were a thousand things Stiles could have grabbed onto to stop his fall. A thousand ways to survive, for a man who was a ghost.

He was gone. Scott needed to go back and check on Allison, needed to call Malia, to tell _Lydia_ , god, everything, and he would, because Scott needed to regroup--but that had been _Stiles_ , and Scott knew, already and for sure: if he had to, he’d spend the rest of his life trying to find him.

...

It’s been almost six weeks since Stiles stabbed Allison and then disappeared off into the night. Five weeks since Scott slid his claws into the back of Stiles’ neck and _howled_ for him to come home. Long enough to find this new normal, but not long enough to get used to it. 

Stiles is _Stiles_ , not his dead-eyed Winter Soldier lookalike, but he hasn’t stayed in one place for more than an hour since his memories came back. Even when Scott knows he’s around somewhere nearby, he’ll disappear for hours, even days. This is the fourth time he’s given notice in a way that makes Scott think he doesn’t even plan to stay in the city. The last time he was gone more than a week. Scott still doesn’t know where.

Scott is so used to a Stiles that can’t stay still, but this is nothing like that at all. It’s a little bit like those first few days after the nogitsune--but the nogitsune only had Stiles, all told, for less than three days. They had the whole pack then, with Talia to lead them and guide them, to surround Stiles and drive the spirit out before it even managed to kill anybody. Stiles was like this for a day or two, distant, not fond of rooms without windows but never leaving a window open at his back, and then he got over it. It wasn’t like this.

Scott doesn’t _know_ who had Stiles these past eighty years. ‘The Benefactor’ isn’t even a name, just a title--and that so-called Benefactor might have been using Stiles as their own personal assassin for decades, but Scott doesn’t think he or she’s the one who grabbed Stiles out of Beacon Hills and brainwashed him in the first place. Eighty years since Stiles has been home. Eighty years since he last stopped running.

So now Stiles will talk to Scott, he just won’t stay. He’ll come back, but only if Scott doesn’t try to chase him down. He has so far. It’s only been five weeks. If Scott gives him long enough, then Stiles will just come _back_.

All of him. Just like he used to be.

…

In the mean time, Scott goes home. There’s nothing left at the Hale house but ghosts.

Scott’s an old-fashioned kind of guy, so he takes his motorcycle all the way home, rather than parking it at the edge of the city and hopping on the high rail. The concrete canyons between skyscrapers are shadowy, even with the sky starting to lighten through the narrow gaps overhead, and quiet. Not a lot of people wander around street level even midday, let alone at four in the morning.

He likes his bike. It’s too heavy to ride on most of the pedestrian bridges, but Scott doesn’t mind the street level paths too much. It’s a complete electricity-guzzling retro novelty that’s old enough to still have an actual gasoline tank, not that Scott’s ever filled it up. It reminds him of the old one he used to have, back when people still drove cars within city limits and gas stations charged less than twenty bucks to the gallon.

His apartment is cozy. It’s nice. 3 million people shoved together in a city the same size as Scott’s hometown, and Scott should hate it, probably, but he doesn’t. No matter how lonely he’s felt since the day he woke up, no matter where Scott is in the city, there’s always somebody around close enough for him to hear their heartbeat. He’s never really all alone.

The sun is just hitting the tops of the buildings when Scott gets back to his, which means that on a normal morning, he _would_ just be stretching and heading out for a run. After a night like last night, though, Scott is invoking Alpha privilege. He’s going to bed.

...

Scott doesn’t dream about it much any more, but the year he turned twenty-two, Beacon Hills saw three different murder sprees by midsummer. The weather was hot and global-warming sticky, and he and Stiles celebrated the end of their very last week of college finals ever by running off together into the woods on the edge of town, down to the tiny little creek in the middle of the preserve that hadn’t quite dried up yet.

They stripped down to their boxers and splashed at each other like they were kids in water that only came up to mid-thigh. Stiles grabbed Scott in an ambush and pushed him out into the deepest part of the creek, getting him down on his knees and wrestling playful until a stray shove took Scott all the way down under the water. He came up gasping for breath and reaching for his inhaler, lungs tight, dizzy and human. They broke off to sit on the bank for a while, warm in the sun.

Stiles had the entrance exam for the Beacon County sheriff’s department in three weeks, because the police department was so short-handed they were taking new recruits every chance they could get. He probably should’ve been paying more attention to the serial killers, they _both_ should, but they’d both been living on-campus an hour away--and anyway, it was Beacon Hills. Murder sprees and serial killers cropped up every couple of years, their whole lives growing up. It wasn’t weird if it happened like clockwork from the time you were a child.

That year was a particularly bad year, though. Bad enough to make some people a little desperate, and to give others a few ideas.

“Aw, shit, I left my cell phone in the car,” Stiles said. He stood up, looming tall with Scott still sprawled out on his back on a rock, shiny-wet and silhouetted dark against the sun. “I’m gonna run and get it, I’ll be right back.”

It ought to take twenty minutes for Stiles to make his run, more or less. Ten to get to the car, mostly naked with wet feet shoved bare into gym shoes, ten to get back. Twenty minutes alone running through the woods. Not a safe thing to do in Beacon Hills, if you’re human.

They didn’t know yet. They didn’t _know_.

Scott doesn’t dream about this much any more, but he sat on the bank of the creek for a lot less than twenty minutes, even though in memory it always seems like an eternity. He’d been happy and content, then, but when he dreams about it, every once in a while, this is always where the forboding starts. Scott sat on the bank of the creek in the sun, human and defenseless, and then, finally, the beast prowled out of the underbrush.

Scott ran.

Frantic, dashing at full speed barefoot over twigs and leaves and rocks, he ran while the beast panted at his heels. Scott ran, branches and brambles whipping past, wheezing for breath and too terrified to stop. It came out of nowhere, fur-covered monster, and chased him down like a terrified deer. It felt like he would have to run forever. It felt like his throat would close up and he’d choke and then it would be on him at any second--

Scott’s foot went out from under him, slipping off a fallen branch and turning his ankle hard to the side, sending him sprawling. An instant later, the beast’s breath was hot on Scott’s back, on the nape of his neck. Scott cried. He knows he cried. He was so sure, in that moment, that he was about to die.

The claws that Peter dug into him shouldn’t have turned him, Scott learned that later. He learned a lot of things later, from Talia and from Alan and the rest of the pack, once they’d taken him in. Peter was a beta wielding a dead alpha’s stolen claws, experimenting to see just what sort of thing he could make out of one hapless boy in the middle of the woods. The Hale pack wasn’t tiny, but it had been a bad year. Peter thought they needed more betas, more power. If Talia wouldn’t bite them, then Peter would do it himself.

Or, knowing Peter: he thought that _he_ needed more power. Anyone who could create werewolves was already as good as an alpha, no matter what color their eyes. Talia wouldn’t ever let Peter take her power, so he’d find his own avenues for it.

Scott was a one-in-a-million miracle, Alan said. He should have died there, cut up so deep and bleeding on the forest floor. That Peter actually managed to create a werewolf out of him...it was unheard of. Impossible.

Scott didn’t know any of that. He knew that he hurt, that his skin was clawed and slashed so deep down his side that he could barely breathe for the pain. He could barely breathe at all. He was mostly naked and completely alone and his lungs were so tight from running he could never shout for help. He knew that something huge and furred had come out of the woods and hunted him like prey and nothing would ever be the same again. He thought it would probably be because he was about to die.

And this is the part that Scott has dreamed about, again and again, every few nights for the past five weeks: Stiles found him.

Somehow, as far as Scott ran through those woods with Peter chasing him, Stiles found him. He put his arms around Scott, warm and steady, and called for help. Scott didn’t die of blood loss or an asthma attack right there in the middle of the woods before the werewolf healing ever kicked in to save him.

Stiles’ hands were firm and warm putting pressure on the gouges Peter tore through Scott’s side. Stiles was there. Stiles was always there.

“You’re going to be fine, Scotty,” Stiles said. “I’ve got you. I’m right here.”

He found Scott in time. He always did, every single time.

Scott was the one who hadn’t been able to find him back.

...

Scott wakes up five or six hours after he falls into bed, because his wall is buzzing at him and flashing vivid blue. He rolls over on his back and rubs at his face, trying to shove himself back into the right-here-and-now.

“Siri, who is it?” he asks.

When Lydia heard what Scott named his apartment computer, she started laughing, helplessly, while everybody else just looked confused. Nobody under the age of ninety even knows what an iPhone was, but if Scott has to give voice commands, they might as well be to a familiar name.

“Allison left you a voice message,” the computer says. “Five minutes old.”

“Play message as voice,” Scott says.

“Are you still asleep, or did you forget to charge your wristband again before you went out?” Allison’s voice sounds amused, not the oddly flat tone it always takes when the computer synthesizes it for her text-written messages. “I want to know how last night went. You know how Malia gives reports. Wake up.”

Deep breath that’s more than half a yawn. Okay. It’s ten AM, time to quit lying in bed like the college student he hasn’t been in eighty-some-odd years.

“Siri, tell Allison I’m up,” Scott says, and rolls towards his feet. “‘What kind of questions did you have?’ Send.”

Siri’s little blinking lights follow him down the hall to the bathroom, then up into the kitchen where his coffee is already waiting for his daily ritual of completely useless caffeination. Malia always looks so surprised when she sees Scott using modern technology without blinking. Scott doesn’t have the heart to tell her that the voice/text chat system isn’t _that_ different from Skype. The text of Allison’s message trails along the top of Scott’s walls, just in case he misses a word while he’s gulping coffee and wants to glance at a transcript.

“Trust me, they’re doing just fine in lockup,” Allison says, and then Siri’s normal voice interrupts, “Malia also wants to deliver a voice message.”

“Great,” Scott says, and taps his fingers against the kitchen table. It’s exactly like hitting ‘send’ if you just assume your whole house is a keyboard. “Siri, switch to Malia, what did she say?”

“You went to see him last night, didn’t you?” Malia sounds less amused and more ticked. “Allison just said you just got up.”

“Oh god,” Scott sighs. “No, Siri, don’t send that. Tell her, ‘I’m fine this morning, how was the rest of your night?’ Send.”

There’s a pause for lag time, then. “You’re derailing, Scott, look at my face.” Siri obligingly opens the image on one wall: Malia in her own living room, arms crossed, looking disapprovingly right into the camera. “Do I look happy with you?”

“You know, I’m old enough to be your grandfather,” Scott points out.

“Not really,” Malia says, which is...technically true, probably. But they don’t talk about that part of Malia’s past. “He’s dangerous, Scott.”

“So are we,” Scott says, and maybe taps his fingers to send it a little more firmly than the computer absolutely needs. “Siri, switch to Allison. Ask her if she really needed to talk about my sleep with Malia.”

“She’s worried about you,” Allison replies a moment later.

“She doesn’t need to be,” Scott says.

“Scott, _I’m_ worried about you,” Allison says. “Stiles is dangerous.”

“I _know_ that,” Scott says. “I’m the one he almost killed, remember? It’s not like I forgot.” He almost killed Allison, too, and it’s not fair to disregard that, but _still_. “Since when do we only save people who aren’t dangerous?” Scott asks. “He’s Stiles. He knows that now. He’s not going to kill me.”

“Scott, we’re not afraid he’s going to kill you,” says Allison. “We’re afraid you’re going to kill yourself chasing after him when he doesn’t want to be caught.”

It’s too easy to forget, sometimes, that he’s only known Allison and Malia and the rest of his team for about a year. A year of the kind of fighting they have to do builds bonds quick. They love him. They’re not Isaac and Boyd and Erica and Cora, but Scott loves them back. It’s just been a little extra-confusing lately, because nobody’s ever loved Scott before who didn’t _know_ exactly what Stiles meant, too.

Allison doesn’t know Stiles. She knows the Winter Soldier, the assassin out of legend who almost killed half a dozen people she cares about, and it makes sense that she’s worried but she’s _wrong_.

“Scott, do you have a reply for Allison?” Siri asks, breaking into the lengthening silence of between-message lag time. “You have three messages waiting from Malia.”

“Reply to Allison,” Scott says. “I’m not chasing him. If I were, I wouldn’t be home, would I?”

A pause from Allison, while she gets his message and figures out what to say to it. Then, “Malia wants to know why you’re not answering her messages.”

“It’s been two minutes,” Scott says. “I’ve been talking to you.”

“She always forgets the old man can’t multitask,” Allison teases. It’s unfortunately true--Scott’s never had trouble keeping up with the speed of a fight, but most of the people in this day and age flip between conversations and trains of thought as quickly and naturally as Stiles on a day without his Adderal. It makes him _feel_ old.

Stiles would fit in with their crew. He’d tease Allison and bicker with Malia and harass the beta team and make Lydia laugh, just like he used to in the old days. He belongs _here_.

“I’m going to make my old man oatmeal and message Malia,” Scott says. Case in point, he’s been so busy not-quite-arguing with Allison that he hasn’t even gotten his breakfast into a bowl yet. “I can be down to give you a full report on last night by twelve.”

“Good enough for me,” says Allison. “Last one to get his report in brings lunch.”

…

Siri keeps Scott’s calendar with precision accuracy, so Scott doesn’t have to count the days until Stiles promised he’d call. She does it for him.

There are plenty of things to do in the mean time. There are more than three million people in the city of Beacon Hills, and half a million more spread out across the rest of the county, and the percentage of supernatural beings to humans here hasn’t gone down at all. Somebody needs to keep it contained.

Eighty years, and some things are still just the same. There are different faces at the battlefront--and god, what Talia, what _Derek_ would have said about an _Argent_ leading the fight to protect Beacon Hills--but the war hasn’t changed.

During the day, Allison teaches basic self-defense and competition-level archery to everyday, ordinary humans in a courtyard on the eleventh floor of the building where Scott lives. In a back room she keeps a list, ball-point pen in a real, paper notebook, of every supernatural person and creature they know of in the entire city. She’s been trying to hold Beacon Hills with the dregs of the Argent family fortune and whatever little help she could scrape together since she was twenty years old.

Of course Scott is helping her. He has Talia’s eyes and all her power now, or so he assumes, inherited while he slept. He’s the only alpha in Beacon Hills. He hasn’t forgotten everything he knows about duty.

There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of people in this city with supernatural powers, sensitivities, and vulnerabilities. Ten miles out from the edge of the city, the nemeton still thrums along, green and spreading and ancient as ever, the beacon that guides them all home. Hundreds of people with their names written carefully down in Allison’s notebook, dozens or even hundreds more they’ve missed.

If Scott focuses in on what’s in front of him and refuses to think about Stiles, wherever he is right now, it’s almost just like old times.

…

“Oh my god,” Stiles said. “You’re freaking _werewolf commandos_. Scott’s very own team of snapping, snarling, howling commandos, ready to stalk evil on our every orders.” He grinned, easy on the surface but just as sharp and hungry around the eyes as any werewolf Scott had ever known. “This is _awesome_.”

“Our orders?” Boyd asked. “Funny, I don’t remember the alpha telling us you were going to be leading the kelpie hunt.”

“Suggestions,” Cora said. “The only _orders_ I take come from my mother.”

“Of course we’re not giving orders,” Scott said, stepping forward. “Talia and Laura are negotiating with the hunters to keep them out of our way. We’re just going to do what they’d want us to do if they were here.”

“And where are we starting with that, exactly?” Lydia asked.

She’d been _young_ then, twenty-three like the rest of them, with a scream that could split solid rock and a piercing ‘unimpressed’ look that was somehow even sharper. She was there by Talia’s suggestion and Scott’s straight-up unashamed begging. Scott and Stiles had agreed almost as soon as Talia had asked Scott to lead this team--they wanted Lydia on their side, and not just because she could find the bodies before they even washed up on shore.

Everyone was there: Boyd, sitting straight and self-contained on the couch in Scott and Stiles’ living room, Isaac sprawling loose-limbed next to him, Erica perched high on the sofa back between them, needling Isaac in the side with the steel toe of her boot whenever she didn’t think anybody was looking. Cora, standing near the door, a little cautious and suspicious but ready to follow at Scott’s command, no matter what she said. Lydia standing opposite her, arms folded, just waiting to be impressed.

Stiles, almost bouncing on his toes at Scott’s side, game and ready for anything.

“We’re going to split up and canvas the area,” Scott said. “We’ve got two, maybe three days to find the kelpies’ lair before they get hungry enough to come out of the water looking for prey.”

“And when we find them?” Erica asked.

“Quick and clean,” said Scott. “We’ve all helped on hunts before. We all know how to do this.”

Three hours later, trudging through the forest twenty yards behind Lydia while she moved through the trees in something like a half-trance, Scott tilted his head and confided quietly to Stiles, “I have no idea how to do this.”

“They’re demon horses,” Stiles said. “I’m pretty sure you can go through the jugular.”

“That’s not what I mean,” said Scott, and of course Stiles already knew it.

“They trust you,” said Stiles. “Come on, it’s only one hunt.”

“That’s the thing,” said Scott. “I don’t think it _is_.”

He hadn’t been a werewolf as long as anybody else on his team, but a year spent attached to the Hale pack was long enough to know the way Talia’s lips went thin at the name _Argent_ , and to spot the worry creases around her eyes whenever somebody mentioned Deucalion. There were so many factors in play in Beacon Hills. Either Derek or Cora could be leading this team, and maybe _should_ be, but Talia had asked Scott. The only member of her pack not bound to her by bite or blood. And the way she’d said it, Scott didn’t think it was only about the kelpies.

“Hey,” Stiles said. “So you impressed her over the thing with the nogitsune. Worry about the kelpies now and the next thing later, okay?”

Except that Scott hadn’t done anything impressive with the nogitsune. He’d helped track Stiles’ body down as soon as Laura found the broken bottle by the roots of the Nemeton and realized what must have happened, but Laura was the one who’d figured out that Stiles was possessed. Alan was the one who had the extract of _Letharia vulpina_ in his store of magical herbs and potions. Talia was the one who defeated the thing in the end. All Scott had done was stand in front of the poisoned nogitsune and offer it a different body to claim, so long as it came out of Stiles first.

It would’ve been ten times easier to defeat the nogitsune if Scott had been willing to lose Stiles with it. Not exactly the kind of thing Talia would be _impressed_ with.

Still, it was probably a good sign that Stiles was willing to mention those three days at all, even if he did instantly try to change the subject. For him, Scott was willing to let it sit.

Still. “When they realize this isn’t just for one mission, what if they don’t want to follow me?” Scott asked instead.

“They will,” said Stiles. “For the exact same reason _I’m_ still here.”

“Why’s that?” His heart clenched, a little--Stiles _shouldn’t_ be here, 100% human and vulnerable, and he wouldn’t be in half as much danger if he just stayed home, but he still was and Scott wouldn’t trade it for anything.

“Because they’re going to figure out that your furry ass would be toast in about twenty seconds on your own, and you’re kind of endearing,” Stiles said. He shoved Scott in the shoulder. “Come on, we’ve got to catch up to Lydia before she does her banshee trance wandering thing right off a cliff.”

…

Scott gets up at 5:30 in the morning and goes running, every day he can. He takes the high footpaths that connect to the terrace on the fifty-seventh floor of his building, just wide enough for three people abreast, suspended from one skyscraper to the next in an enormous sprawling spiderweb that crosses the city.

He’s not alone. The dawn breaks overhead and the pigeons flutter by, and he nods at the early-morning dogwalkers on the wider paths twenty feet above or below. Last winter, when the sun rose late, he’d usually round the Glenmoor building early enough to wave good morning/good night to the trio of vampires that live over that way, getting home just before dawn. Since the start of summer his morning route’s managed to synch up two or three times a week with the kitsune from two blocks over.

She’s on Allisons list as ‘Kira’, and Scott doesn’t know much about her, except that she’s around his age and sometimes he catches the shadows of two bushy tails behind her for an instant in the wavering morning light. She’s a good running partner, matches his stride even when Scott needs to put on a burst of supernatural energy and just _go_ for a while, and she doesn’t ask any more questions than he does.

Running with Kira. Breakfast in his own kitchen with Siri reading out the latest news of the day, and usually either Allison or Malia awake and sending him insistent messages about one issue or another. Then it’s work, three days a week, because Lydia’s generous with her money and her property but he can’t just live entirely off her generosity forever. She gave him the apartment rent-free and introduced him to the people who run the animal shelter and rehab clinic on the eighty-third floor, which is more than Scott could ever have asked for. He can’t exactly put his two incredibly outdated semesters of vet school on a resume, but cleaning cages is still cleaning cages, and even this shiny future has more than its share of strays.

Cats, dogs, raccoons with broken legs and the occasional injured deer that lives on the forested city roofs, a bent-winged peregrine falcon from one of the roosts that hunt the canyons between skyscrapers like mile-high rocky cliffs. They all _need_ something, even if it’s just a little attention. Scott gives them what he can.

It keeps Scott busy during his mornings, and then it’s back all the way downstairs to the eleventh floor. Liam’s just starting to really get good at controlling his powers. Mason’s bite mark from the wendigoes is healing nicely. Violet and Garrett are both dangerous opponents in the ring, even though they don’t seem quite as invested in the mission as Scott wishes they were. He spars with Malia, sometimes, when she goads him into it, or even with Allison, who manages to kick his ass every single time without a speck of supernatural strength in her body.

They get curry for dinner from the restaurant on the twelfth floor, and sit down and talk about Allison’s list and their next targets. They plan.

Scott keeps busy, just like he’s kept busy every single week for the past fourteen months. He gets through the days.

Stiles is coming back. It’s just a matter of time.

…

Six days after Stiles takes off into the early predawn light, Scott lets himself into his apartment after his morning run, toweling the sweat out of his hair with his t-shirt, and finds Stiles sitting at his kitchen table with a box of cookies and a cup of coffee. He’s early this time. It means Scott’s right about everything.

“Hey,” Scott says cautiously.

“When did they stop putting ingredient labels on things, anyway?” Stiles asks. “Are there nuts in these? I could have a nut allergy.”

It’s hard to be sure sometimes, how much Stiles remembers. Scott did his best to free the locked-away memories in the back of his mind, and it seems like the framework is all there. Does remembering nutrition labels and the days before widespread allergy cures mean Stiles also remembers all the important things about his life? How does it work? Knowing Stiles, he’s faking remembering a lot more than he really knows. 

“I got them right from the bakery,” Scott says. “You don’t have a nut allergy.”

“But I _could_.” Stiles glances up. “You going to take a shower? You kind of need one.”

So Scott goes to take a shower, and doesn’t ask if Stiles will still be there when he gets out. It’s the first time in six days he’s felt able to breathe.

…

Stiles is gone when Scott comes back, along with the cookies. Scott gets dressed and heads up to work. He’ll have to stop by the bakery again this afternoon.

The window in his living room, the one that opens to a sheer drop down from the thirty-ninth floor--Scott’s not the one who opened that. He leaves it ajar.

...

 

Stiles comes and goes. Usually he goes more than he comes, but Scott sees him once or twice most days, when he hasn’t said he’d be gone. Last time, Scott got almost a week between Stiles’ unexplained extended absences. That gives him a couple more days.

There are moments, more than there were a month ago, when Stiles sounds almost like himself.

“Curquitos, definitely.” Stiles brandishes the food in his hand, swiped yet again out of Scott’s cabinet, as evidence.

“Taquitos made with curry and mystery meat?” Scott asks. “ _That’s_ your pick for the greatest invention of the past eighty years?”

“Delicious curry and mystery meat taquitos that cook to perfect greasy crispiness in six seconds flat in your own kitchen, yeah.” Scott rolls his eyes, just like he’s supposed to.

“Stiles, they cured AIDS fifty years ago,” he points out.

“And that’s awesome, I’m just saying,” Stiles pushes. “Do you remember ever having a deep fried snack food come out of the microwave that wasn’t soggy? In six seconds? Best invention for the overall improvement of my everyday quality of life.”

Yeah, this is Stiles _exactly_ like himself. Exactly like the guy Scott’s known how to read for close to his entire life. Stiles has always, always derailed and distracted from conversations he didn’t want to have in _exactly_ the same way.

Stiles cares about snack foods and nutrition labels on Scott’s cookies as much as he gives a crap about invasive species of oak trees. It’s a misdirection. Stiles has _always_ been a champion of misdirection. He hates being backed into a corner.

Eighty years ago, when they lived together, when Scott would’ve said there wasn’t anything in the world about Stiles he didn’t know, Scott could always tell when Stiles needed to be left alone or nudged and cajoled into talking about whatever was going on. He always knew, 99.5% certainty, how Stiles would react if Scott did have to force an issue. He knew when to push and when to let Stiles just keep talking.

Now Scott isn’t so sure any more. The Stiles of eighty years ago wouldn’t have tried to recover from being brainwashed by disappearing for days on end. He wouldn’t have been that seriously willing to kill. Scott hasn’t been pushing because he doesn’t _know_ what Stiles will do, whether he’ll get angry, or scared, or just take off without promising to check in at all.

But. It’s Stiles. He’s _the same_. He has to be, underneath all the new skills and a couple of trauma reflexes, the same.

“I was thinking,” Scott says carefully. “Maybe you could help me with something.”

“Like what?” Stiles glances over, wary. He doesn’t stand up, but his shoulders--both of them, even the metal one--go just a little tense.

“We think there’s a couple of rakshasas who just moved in across town,” says Scott. “I was going to do some surveillance, but I could really use some backup.”

“Don’t you have a coyote for that?” Stiles asks. He’s never called Malia by name, even though Scott knows he knows it. They haven’t been in the same room together since Stiles got his memories back. “I thought she was your partner.”

“She’s part of my team,” Scott says. “But stealth missions aren’t exactly her strong point.” An understatement. He and Allison can actually pull off stealth missions together pretty well, but even though Allison swears she’s healed, Scott’s not going to be the one to push it. And anyway Allison is _busy_ , teaching classes and trying to keep her little shop afloat and trying to keep track of every supernatural going-on in the entire city all at once. Stiles, as far as Scott can tell, doesn’t have any real plans at all.

For another thing, not even Allison’s ever been able to fall into sync with Scott quite like Stiles always could. Scott doesn’t really think anyone ever will. He needs to know if they can get that again. Stiles has to need to know too. Right?

“Aren’t coyotes supposed to be sneaky?” Stiles asks, but it’s not a ‘no’.

“Come on,” Scott coaxes, and tries not to think too much about the times when Stiles would’ve been the one cajoling him into one little off-the-books mission, just the two of them. It doesn’t _feel_ like most of a century ago. Scott remembers it like it was last year, and it _feels_ like it was yesterday.

Maybe it can be today. “What are you doing right now?” Scott asks.

“Eating this delicious deep-fried snack?” says Stiles.

“If you come with me to check out the rakshasas, I’ll buy you actual fries,” says Scott. “Give me three hours. Come on.”

…

It’s completely bizarre getting on a train with Stiles. It’s a context thing: Stiles fits _way too well_ on a futuristic high-speed bullet train, fading into the crowd like any other guy in his mid-twenties in long sleeves with his hands jammed into his pockets. Even his posture is different, out here in public, slumped and at ease in a way Scott hasn’t seen him in...well. In eighty years.

Stiles’ eyes flicker continuously, towards the train doors, the windows, across every other passenger in the train. Scott’s pretty sure he’s noticing things that even Allison would miss. But watching anywhere other than his eyes, there’s nothing at all. He doesn’t display even a hint of the constant tension that Scott’s been seeing in him since the moment he knew Stiles was still alive.

“So what else do you know about these guys?” Stiles asks. “Where’d they move into?”

“Um, Woodward Towers,” Scott says. “Over on the southeast side of the city.” Nobody gives locations by street intersections any more except for construction workers and other people who have a reason to actually go places streetside. Stiles just nods, like he knows exactly where Woodward Towers is, and it doesn’t even phase him. “I think they’re on one of the lower floors.”

“Very specific,” Stiles teases, almost absently, like he thinks he should. Scott glances over at him again.

There are questions Stiles ought to be asking--how are they planning to find the rakshasas, what are their strengths and weaknesses, does Scott really expect trouble--and he _isn’t_. Of course, Stiles is sort of an expert tracker, now, so maybe he doesn’t think they’ll have any problem finding their targets as soon as they get there. Maybe Scott sold this a little too well as an easy milk run, and Stiles doesn’t think there’ll be any major trouble at all.

Scott tries to look like he’s staring blankly out the train window, and watches Stiles as surreptitiously as he can out of the corner of his eye. Stiles isn’t fidgeting, not one bit, but his hands are loose in his pockets. A couple of chattering teenage girls get on the train and crowd over towards where Scott and Stiles are standing, and Stiles moves, just a casual half-step left, where he’s not at all boxed in and still has a clear line of sight to every door and window in the entire train car.

“I don’t know how they’ll react if they spot us,” Scott says, testing. “They might not be happy.”

“...Well, yeah,” Stiles says, “obviously,” like trouble is already a foregone conclusion.

…

Scott hasn’t run into a rakshasa since he was 24. Aditi and Suresh were a lot like the Hales: tusks, claws, an instinctual thirst for human flesh and a general refusal to actually eat it. Some rakshasas are vegetarians. Some werewolves protect children. Some wendigos find another way.

And then you get werewolves like the long-dead Carver pack, rakshasas like Aditi’s brother Ajit, and wendigos like the ones Scott and the team took down last week. If Scott and Stiles are _lucky_ , the rakshasas they’re going to see now would be the first kind.

Of course they’re not lucky. Why would they _ever_ be lucky?

…

Scott lands hard against the wall, a solid _thud_ that’s going to have the neighbors calling the cops any minute now. It’s Beacon Hills, and the cops have always known to give a certain amount of leeway to any weird and unusual fights, but they still need to try to keep things _contained_. Population density is way too high to be brawling with a couple of fanged and clawed demons in a small apartment like this.

“Stiles!” he shouts. Stiles is a blur, a flash of silver, the glint of a knife in his hand slashing through the air and the gleam of his now-bare arm. This isn’t the Stiles Scott knows at all. This is the Winter Soldier in all his deadliest glory, blood dripping from his blade and going after two snarling rakshasa without so much as a quip.

Scott blinks his eyes to clear his head, and realizes, far too late, that he’s been way too worried about what the rakshasa might manage to do to Stiles. What happens to Stiles if _he_ manages to kill _them_?

Stiles dives left, rolls to the floor where he dropped his coat, and comes up with something Scott hasn’t seen used in a fight in the entire fourteen months he’s been here: a slender, matte black submachine gun, already aimed and ready to go. No. _No._

“No!” Never mind that Stiles has apparently been carting that, and god only knows what else, around in his coat all afternoon. If he fires that in here the cops _will_ be arriving in under a minute, and civilians _are_ going to get hurt. Three pairs of eyes swivel towards Scott, and he triangulates, fast, he’s only got a second.

They found the rakshasas on the fourteenth floor, exterior wall, no balcony. Scott is fifteen feet away from the window and all three of them are standing in the middle. He’s got about a tenth of a second left and only one chance at this.

He needs to get _all_ of them outside. This only works if Stiles follows his lead.

And then Scott doesn’t have any more time to think because he’s running, top werewolf speed, barreling into the bigger rakshasa and sending them both bursting straight through the plate glass window. Shards splinter all around them as Scott carries them straight down.

He has just enough time to twist around in midair, try to get the rakshasa below him as much as he can, before they slam into the ground with a bone-crunching _thud_.

Scott rolls off the rakshasa to the side, his head dizzy and ringing from the hundred and thirty foot fall. He can feel half a dozen bones knitting together. Apparently man-eating Vedic demons are made of stronger stuff than werewolves, though, because the rakshasa is already off and running.

Scott only has one brief moment to spare a glance back up at the window they fell from before he throws himself to the right, out of the way of the plummeting form of the second rakshasa. There’s no sign of Stiles at all, just the massive, ground-shaking impact as the rakshasa slams into the concrete hard enough to leave a second small crater next to the first. She lands on all fours, then raises her head and snarls.

A second later, she’s gone too, taking off down the same shadowy back alley as her friend. Scott glances up at the window again, but he _has_ to go after them. He can’t leave two people that dangerous the chance to go to ground safely. Stiles can take care of himself.

It’s a chase after that, Scott down on all fours following his nose and panting for breath, listening for the sounds of clawed feet on the ground while his heartbeat thunders in his ears. This is dumb, so dumb. He doesn’t have backup. Stiles _can’t_ run this fast, even if he could get down to ground level quick enough to track where they’d gone, and of course his wristband shattered with the impact against the street so he can’t call for his team, who don’t actually know where Scott _went…_

And then something huge and powerful darts out of an alcove at the side of the street, something Scott hadn’t even noticed. He can still hear both rakshasa’s heartbeats, distantly, up ahead of him but coming near him.

He looks up at the new rakshasa, and he grins at Scott past long tusks. Great. _They_ have backup.

The new rakshasa lifts his lip in a snarl. Scott bares his teeth and snarls back. A second later, he ducks, dodges to the right, and comes up with his claws at the ready. Survive the fight first. Worry about everything else later.

Scott’s so busy with the battle in front of him, _duck, slash, dodge, lunge, claw, bite_ , that when the dark shape drops down from the third-story maintenance bridge above them he doesn’t even register it at first. Then it goes down low and jabs for one of the rakshasas’ hamstrings.

Scott has to dive to the side an instant later, doesn’t quite have time for relief or even a second look. “Malia?” he calls out. Maybe Stiles called for help and they managed to track him somehow. He’d love to hear the whistle of one of Allison’s arrows right about now.

“No,” Stiles calls back, and then, “Down!” Scott drops instantly.

They never used to fight side by side, in the old days. Not in the real battles. Stiles wasn’t allowed on the front lines of the real battles, most of the time, not that it was really a question of _allowing_. Stiles was their researcher, their plan-maker. He never _wanted_ to be out in front of the action while Scott knew him.

It was other times that they moved like this: on the playground in kindergarten and the lacrosse field in tenth grade, orbiting around each other’s paths in their first tiny college dorm room and their minutely bigger apartment. They could walk down the street shoulder to shoulder, once, and never miss a shared step.

Scott doesn’t have _time_ to think about where Stiles is going to be, or how he knows it. He’s too busy with the rakshasas on every side. And this _isn’t_ familiar like walking next to Stiles should be, this is familiar in a completely unfamiliar sort of way, like fighting back to back with Malia, like a dance Scott’s done a hundred times before but never with Stiles as a partner.

He doesn’t have time to think about how or why it's working, but he does take the precious few seconds to glance over and watch Stiles fight. Out here, away from eavesdropping neighbors and with any prying eyes at least fifty feet up, Stiles doesn’t pull his gun out again, but his fighting is _brutal_.

Scott’s fought Stiles. He’s never gotten to watch. Stiles is fast, efficient, and just this side of cruel, going for hamstrings and attack points that would cripple any non-supernatural opponent painfully and permanently. He uses the knife in his right hand as naturally as Scott uses his claws, and the blades in his metal arm--wrist, forearm, elbow--like they’ve been there since birth. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t falter, not for a second. One of the rakshasas punches him in the stomach and Stiles doubles over, and Scott’s about to abandon his own opponent to claw his way over for a save when Stiles turns the motion into a swift low lunge, slashing his blade across the rakshasa’s legs and then slamming his elbow like a sledgehammer into her chin. She reels back for just a second, and Stiles is on her, no hesitation or remorse.

It doesn’t take long to get all three rakshasas down on the ground. It doesn’t take very long at all. Scott looks up from his fallen opponent in time to see Stiles aim a brutal, crunching kick into the face of the rakshasa at his feet.

“Stiles!”

He looks over at Scott, blood dripping from his shining metal fingers, flecked across his cheek. “They’re all still alive,” he says. It’s not defensive, exactly. It’s like he means it as a _gift_.

“Good,” says Scott. “We don’t kill people, Stiles.”

Stiles raises his eyebrows. “And this time I didn’t,” he says. “See? Still breathing.” He jabs his toe hard into the side of the rakshasa he just kicked, and he grunts in pain.

“Okay,” Scott says carefully. “Good.”

He looks around. Down here on ground level you can get away with a lot, but there are still three bulky, heavy bodies lying on the asphalt, and the only safe place Scott knows to put them is in the lockup over in his own building, the secret rooms on the thirteenth floor, right above Allison’s studio and their office. And he still doesn’t have a working wristband.

“Do you have a phone?” Scott asks. “Or anything sort of like a phone?”

“Don’t need that kind of tracking,” Stiles says. “Why, you have an appointment?”

Scott glances through the deepening, mid-afternoon shadows. No cops yet, not down here, but that doesn’t mean they can _stay_. “Help me get them back to the office,” he says. “We can’t exactly take them on the train.”

…

It's not the first time Scott's gone dragging an unconscious target around streetside before sundown, but it doesn't get any easier or less nerve-wracking. 

“This is why you’re not supposed to be allowed to make the plans,” Stiles says. “Your plans always suck.”

“You were right there with me,” Scott points out. His plans are definitely better than they were when he was 23 and just starting out, and they’re better than they were a year ago, when he’d only ever known what it was like to have Stiles there next to him, coming up with the next step. They still sometimes suck. “You didn’t have a better one?”

“No, I didn’t,” Stiles says, and it’s probably so short and terse because he’s single-handedly lugging two hundred pounds of demon down the street over his shoulder. Scott’s trying to drag the other two around by himself, and he can handle the weight fine, but it’s still bulky and awkward as hell.

“Well hey,” Scott says. “At least nobody died, right?”

“If you call that a positive,” Stiles grumbles. “They’d be easier to carry.”

Stiles sounds almost exactly like he would’ve eighty years ago: same inflection, same everything. It’s a little bit scary, because deep down, Scott knows that this time, he _means_ it.

“Thanks for the save,” Scott says instead. “I didn’t think you’d be able to catch up that fast.”

“Parkour: not just for werewolves any more,” Stiles says lightly. “Shortest distance between two points is the roof of a fourth floor delivery tram.”

“That’s--hey, hold on, this is the door.” The small, unassuming little service entrance is actually all the way down at street level on Lydia’s building. Scott has to drop one of the rakshasa and prop her up against the brick wall to get his key out. “That’s really cool that you can do that, though.”

“Yeah, whatever. Somebody had to save your ass.”

“I was doing okay,” Scott defends, even though they both know he’d have been down to trying to calculate an escape-with-his-life route if Stiles hadn’t shown up right then. Stiles follows him through the door, into the thankfully empty, _private_ service hallway of the building, and shuts it behind them.

“Yeah right,” says Stiles. Down the hallway to the service elevator, the ancient one that’s still sleek and fancy enough to have motion sensor activated doors, but still old enough that Scott has to actually push the button for their destination. Of course, the button panel scans his fingerprint to unlock the floor he wants when Scott jabs it, so that’s a few more points for the future elevator. “You’re hopeless, Scott. Face it. You’re an alpha werewolf now and you’re still completely hopeless. And those so-called _partners_ of yours are basically--”

The elevator doors slide open, just like every time Scott comes in up the service entrance, spilling them out into the inner sanctum of Allison’s back training room. Scott takes three steps backwards out of the elevator, dragging both of his rakshasa with him, before he realizes Stiles has gone quiet. And _then_ he registers the extra heartbeats behind him.

“Um,” says Scott. Shit. Stiles is right, he’s a _fucking dumbass_. Nice going, McCall. “Hey, Allison.”

“Scott,” Allison says behind him, cautiously. “And Stiles.” God, Scott loves Allison so much in this moment for how she _doesn’t_ make Stiles’ name a question. She’s obviously waiting for an explanation, but she knows who he is and she’s willing to _wait_.

“Why is the Winter Soldier in our office?” Malia asks, and there _that_ goes. Stiles has the trapped animal look around his eyes again, but the elevator won’t go anywhere without Scott or one of his team to give the fingerprint, and the only other exits are through Allison and Malia. Who are of _course_ hanging out together in Allison’s office this late in the afternoon. Scott lets the rakshasa he’s half-carrying fall to the ground, and carefully, slowly turns.

This was a serious mistake, bringing Stiles straight into what has to feel like a lion’s den. Scott’s trying to at least keep Stiles in his peripheral vision. It helps that Stiles isn’t moving a muscle. Still, if Scott doesn’t keep his eyes on Stiles at all times then he’s afraid Stiles is just going to disappear. He definitely looks like he wants to.

“Delivery,” Stiles says shortly. “I’m on my way out.”

“Excuse me?”

Fuck. 

The rakshasa and the way Stiles’ heart’s been hammering in his chest had thrown off Scott’s hearing. It’s not just Allison and Malia. There’s somebody else in the room, and she’s standing up from the desk tucked away in one corner with just a little bit of a wobble.

Shit, no. Malia takes half a step forward to get her body in between Lydia and Stiles, and Lydia just hits her in the ankle with her elaborately carved ashwood cane. Scott is frozen. There is no way to make this go well.

It was the first thing they agreed on when the Winter Soldier first showed up: they _kept Lyida safe._ Any one of them would lay down and die for her. She was, until Stiles came back, the only thing Scott had left, but she’s that important to Malia and Allison, too. Malia and Allison treat her like their own grandmother. And with them standing guard, she hasn’t even been in the same room as Stiles, not once in seventy-nine years.

Lydia Martin Hale is about four foot eleven, now, small and delicate like a bird’s wing, every movement elegant and precise, every single silver strand of hair in perfect place. She is exactly like she ever was when Scott used to know her, and so much more.

“Stiles Stilinski,” Lydia says crisply. “You are not coming into _my_ building eighty years late and then leaving again without so much as a hello.”

“Lydia,” Stiles says. Stunned. That’s the only way Scott can put it, really. And Stiles’ heart rate is pounding through the roof.

“You owe me dinner,” Lydia says.

…

Lydia Martin was always a little bit like a bird, but eighty years ago, before she outlived very nearly everyone she ever loved, Scott mostly thought of her as a swan: beautiful, graceful, and more than capable of making anybody who messed with her very, very sorry indeed.

She and Stiles were sort of alike, back then. Neither of them were big on the front lines. Lydia would find the bodies, though, and nine times out of ten, she’d call Stiles first.

Stiles would show up with his badge and his gun and his trustworthy brown deputy’s uniform and secure the scene, wave off any curious bystanders, and then, after that, Scott and the other werewolves--his howling commandos--would slip in around the edges. They’d sniff out a scent and read the scene as best they could, and then Scott would send Stiles and Lydia home, to put their enormous brains together and come up with a plan while the werewolves took the bloody, dangerous jobs.

Stiles always said he loved her. When they were eight years old and she shoved him down in the sandbox, he said he loved her. When they were seventeen and she laughed in his face at his prom invitation and went with Jackson Whittemore instead, he said he loved her. When they were twenty-two and Lydia came back to Beacon Hills after college, instead of going on to every bigger and better thing she ever should’ve had in life, Stiles dragged Scott out to have a goddamn party.

When they were twenty-three they found out _why_ Lydia came back to Beacon Hills, what sort of voices wouldn’t stop calling her in her sleep, what kind of help Talia had been asking her to give. That’s when they watched cry over the dead bodies of people she’d never even met, and then later, roll up her sleeves and clench her jaw and find a way to help catch the killers. She didn’t have to join their team but there she was when Scott asked, one lone banshee surrounded by werewolves, trying to make a difference. That’s when Scott learned to love Lydia, just the same as he loved Isaac, and Boyd, and Cora, and Erica, the family he’d kill to save.

He’s pretty sure that’s around the time that Stiles figured out he’d never known jack shit about Lydia Martin, not near enough to love her. Scott never really knew what was between them after that. He’d come home sometimes to find Lydia in their living room, shoulder-to-shoulder with Stiles and arguing over some wall covered in newspaper clippings and yarn. Sometimes, Scott thinks, it had been the two of them working and arguing there for hours.

She never did stay the night after Scott got home, though. Scott doesn’t think they ever even kissed.

Scott sort of thinks that maybe they were on their way, before Stiles died. Eighty years ago, before most of Lydia’s entire life. He’s pretty sure they were supposed to have a date.

…

“Scott tells me you’ve been in town for more than a month,” Lydia says. “I’ve been expecting you to come say hi.”

“I’ve been busy,” Stiles says, and it sounds like him, mostly, in the blithe brush-off, but there’s none of Stiles’ old snap. Scott can hear how unsteady Stiles is in the difference. He wonders if Lydia remembers enough to do the same.

“I’ll let you make it up to me,” says Lydia. “You’re a little late, but there’s a shower back that way, and I know Liam always leaves a clean shirt in his locker. You take twenty minutes to get cleaned up, and I’ll call Cafe Maritime to make sure they can seat us at five.”

“Lydia--” Allison tries.

“You’re not serious,” Malia says bluntly. “We’re not going out to dinner with--”

“Well, you’re not,” Lydia says. “You’re relieved for the night. _I_ am going on the date I was promised eighty years ago, and after you’ve kept me waiting this long, I don’t think you want to be even later.” That part is pointed directly at Stiles.

“You want to go on a _date_?” On the plus side, it’s definitely Stiles, no hint of the Winter Soldier at all in that baffled, slightly wild expression. And he actually seems too confused to keep scoping out potential exits like his life depends on it. On the down side, Scott’s not really sure _what_ an off-balance Stiles is capable of right now.

“I want a conversation and a decent meal,” says Lydia. “It’s past 4:30 and I’m a little old lady. I get hungry early. So are we going, or not?”

“We can--” Scott starts to offer.

“You can help clean _those_ up and debrief with Allison,” Lydia says, with a pointed look for the unconscious rakshasa just starting to twitch on the floor. “I’m sure she’ll be just fascinated. After you show Stiles where the showers are.”

…

They go out to dinner. Of course they do: Lydia is Lydia, and when she sets her mind to getting something, she gets it. Time’s only made her more effective.

By the time Scott and Malia wrestle the rakshasa upstairs into the holding cells, Allison’s called the beta team and given them the night off. Malia paces while Scott tells the story of the fight, letting her claws slide in and out, testing them against her own palm.

Malia loves Lydia. Lydia’s the one that took her in after Allison found her, a lone coyote running across rooftops and howling at the full moon. Lydia’s the one who gave her a home, a semi-human life, a _purpose_. She’s worried, and Scott knows why, he _knows_ Malia’s never really met Stiles, doesn’t know a thing about what Lydia means to him, has no reason to trust him at all. Of course she’s worried.

Scott’s worried too, it’s just over a whole different set of things. He doesn’t think Stiles will hurt Lydia. The Winter Soldier would, but the Winter Soldier is gone. Scott has to believe that. And no matter how willing Stiles might be to kill a random opponent in a fight, he’d never go after Lydia, not while he still knows his own name.

But Lydia pushes. It used to be part of why she and Stiles were such good friends. Lydia has _always_ pushed. And if she _pushes_ Stiles the wrong way while he’s still this jumpy, this not-quite-settled in his own skin--

“Okay, that’s enough,” Allison sighs. “Go home, Scott.”

“No!” Scott glances at the clock on the wall, at Malia, at the door. “What if they come back?”

“Scott, it’s fine,” Allison says. “There’s nothing else to do here tonight. Go home, eat some dinner that doesn’t heat itself up in six seconds or less, and try to relax.”

“Are _you_ relaxed?” Allison doesn’t pace like Malia, but Scott knows her well enough to recognize the way she’s gripping her stylus a little too tightly as she takes notes on the touchscreen of the table.

“I’m not relaxed,” Malia reports. “If she’s not back in half an hour, I’m going after them.”

“ _No._ ” Scott doesn’t mean to put that little bit of Alpha growl into his voice, but he doesn’t quite stop it. The last thing Stiles needs is an overprotective Malia coming after him.

“Nobody is going after anybody,” says Allison. “Scott’s going to go home, and Malia’s going to join me in the sparring ring.” She stands up from the table like it’s already been decided, and that’s why Allison makes a good leader for their little group. She knows how to present her team with the kind of challenge they have no choice but to try to meet.

“Are you sure you’re ready for that?” Allison arches her eyebrows and fixes Scott with the withering look he probably deserves.

“I can take care of myself, alpha boy,” she says. “I’m healed. Time to get back in the ring.”

“You couldn’t take me,” Malia says, testing. It’s sort of true--Allison’s one of the best fully human fighters Scott’s ever known, and she could probably take Malia down fast if she had to, but she just doesn’t have the werewolf stamina for a drawn-out fight. Scott wonders just what would happen in a fair fight between Allison and Stiles. Not that he’s ever known either of them to exactly fight fair. Not that Stiles is exactly human any more, either.

“I’ll call Liam in,” Allison says. “If you really need to wear down that nervous energy.”

“Hey, be nice to my beta,” Scott protests. Malia raises her eyebrows at him.

“You never tell Allison to be nice to me,” she says.

“I thought coyotes didn’t have alphas,” Scott points out right back.

Malia follows his lead more often than not, but she’s not _his_ the same way Liam is, in blood and bone. It’s more like the way Scott was never quite Talia’s: her trusted ally, but not changed by _her_ bite, not quite _her_ pack. Malia’s her own coyote. Scott’s happy enough just to call her _friend_.

“Well, maybe I would if you tried to protect me from Allison,” Malia suggests.

“I thought you could protect yourself,” Allison says. “Afraid to face me one on one?”

Distraction. Derailment. Stiles isn’t the only one who knows how to use them, and they’re good techniques, they really are. It’s a good idea to be distracting Malia right now. Scott just isn’t sure that distraction is what he wants for himself.

At least, not down here. “Okay, I’m going home,” Scott capitulates. He’s going twenty-eight stories straight up. If Stiles and Lydia come back to the office for any reason at all, Scott is _right there_. All Allison or Malia need to do is ping him, and he can be back down in sixty seconds or less.

“Good,” Allison says. And then she hesitates, like she wants to say something else, but can’t quite bring herself to say it.

“What?” Scott asks.

“Nothing.” Allison waves him off. “Go home.”

“Be careful if your boy turns up,” Malia adds, and the way Allison bites her lip lets Scott know that’s close enough to whatever she didn’t say to count.

“He’s not,” says Scott. “He’s not my boy.”

“Maybe that’s why you should be careful,” says Malia.

…

Scott doesn’t usually spend long evenings at home by himself, whatever jokes Allison and Malia like to tell about his sad and lonely life as a geriatric werewolf. The truth is, most nights he’s actually with _them_ , planning or executing a raid, discussing a new target, or just lingering around Allison’s shop because somebody ordered takeout and they might as well eat together instead of apart.

On nights alone, Scott usually ends up outside somewhere, in one of the dozen terraced parks he can get to over any footbridge, or all the way up in the wild, wooded area on the roof of the eighty-fourth floor. That’s not going to work tonight, with Stiles still such a question.

Laura used to stress-bake. Scott’s mom barely had time to cook herself, let alone teach Scott to do it, but he learned the ins and outs of whisks and measuring cups in the Hale family kitchen, during conversations that Talia refused to admit were councils of war. Whenever anything started going really wrong but before anything was quite serious enough to bring formally before the whole pack, Scott would go by the house to ask questions and find Laura in the kitchen determinedly cracking eggs into a bowl.

Laura would raise her wooden spoon and fix Scott, or Derek and Cora, or whoever else had wandered in to her domain with her Alpha-in-training glare. “No tasting while I’m baking,” she’d say, though half the time Alan would be sitting in there with her, clearly protected from all the rules of the kitchen. “Mom’s busy, she’ll be down in a minute.”

It happened every time, until the week after the nogitsune, when Scott stuck his head through the kitchen door.

“Mom’s upstairs,” Laura started.

“I know,” Scott said. “I know, I just wanted to apologize. I forced her hand, and I put a lot of people in danger.” He’d have done it again a million times over, with or without the Hale pack to back him, but he still probably owed Talia an apology.

Laura raised her wooden spoon, and Scott drew back on reflex, but then she offered it to him, handle-first.

“Here,” she said. “Stir this.”

Talia had come down ten minutes later. They hadn’t talked about the nogitsune at all, just Laura’s cookies, and Scott’s commute between Beacon Hills and vet school, and the rumor Laura had gotten from Derek that there were kelpies setting up out by the lake. Two weeks later, Talia gave him the team.

Laura never chased Scott out of the kitchen again. He used to debrief with Talia with a whisk in one hand, though they never called it debriefing in those days. Sometimes Alan would be there, or Peter would show up and all the conversation would get just a little more casual because Laura couldn’t quite chase her uncle out of the kitchen the same way she did her siblings. Whenever Laura shooed Stiles out, which was maybe half the time he actually walked into the kitchen, it had nothing to do with sensitive information and everything to do with Stiles trying to filch raw cookie dough out of the bowl with his fingers, no matter how many times they’d been smacked.

Scott still knows how to make Laura’s cherry and white chocolate almond bars with his eyes closed. Not that he _has_ dried cherries or slivered almonds in the apartment, but that’s one of the glories of the modern world, where the supermarket is only twelve floors or a thirty-second elevator ride away.

“Hey Siri,” Scott says. “Can we get some groceries delivered? In the next ten minutes?”

“Of course, Scott,” Siri says.

What the hell. If Stiles doesn’t show up tonight, Malia will always eat them in the morning.

…

There’s a tiny scratching noise out on Scott’s balcony around ten o’clock at night. Half of Scott’s balcony is taken up by the branches of a linden tree growing from a five-by-eight-foot ledge, two stories down, and it wouldn’t be the first wild animal he’s had passing through. It could easily be a raccoon. It’s not. Raccoon hearts beat a lot faster.

Scott’s not even baking any more, really, he’s just been killing time scrubbing every last surface and utensil until he had to give up and go to bed. Looks like he doesn’t have to now. “Hey,” he says, and then turns around. Stiles lingers in the kitchen doorway. “How was dinner?”

“She married _Cora_ ,” Stiles says in bafflement. It’s not exactly ‘hi’, but Scott’ll take it.

“Yeah,” he says. “I guess it kind of makes sense. Remember the way they were always sniping at each other?”

“Well, _yeah_ , but…” He breaks off.

Stiles rubs at his face with his hands, pinches the bridge of his nose, old body language that hasn’t changed very much at all even if one of the hands involved does glint silver in the light.

“Hey,” says Scott. “You doing okay?”

“Yeah,” says Stiles. “Yeah, I’m fine, I’m just…” He stops, like even Stiles doesn’t know what he is. “I’m _tired_.”

It’s probably the first time Scott’s heard Stiles admit to weakness, and mean it, in eighty years. It didn’t happen all that much before, either.

“Okay,” says Scott, like it’s easy, because it _can be_. “So let’s go to bed.”

…

It’s been a while since Scott’s been able to really _take care_ of Stiles, but he still remembers the tricks.

Stiles doesn’t really think of himself as a good person. They’ve had arguments about it in the past, because Stiles _is_ a good person, just a little more pragmatic and mercenary sometimes than Scott is, but sometimes it helps. Scott’s never had to convince Stiles that he _deserves_ the things he needs. Stiles doesn’t _care_ what he deserves. He’ll take evidence out of a sealed file in police lockup or the last slice of pie out of somebody else’s fridge. On the whole long list of people Scott is somehow responsible for, nine times out of ten Stiles is the _last_ person Scott has to worry about, because Stiles takes care of himself. 

It was always the tenth time that got tricky. It’s definitely a tenth time now. Stiles won’t refuse help out of misplaced guilt, but he doesn’t like to need anything at all. Even from Scott.

“Here.” Scott tosses an undershirt and a clean pair of boxers over without asking if Stiles wants them. Stiles doesn’t have any clothes with him besides the ones on his back, the button-down that’s not even his. Stiles needs something to sleep in, just like Stiles _needs_ to get some sleep. No discussion necessary.

And no, Scott hasn’t asked where Stiles has been sleeping, what he’s been doing for clothes, for money, if he’s even been eating besides the bakery cookies and preservative-soaked snacks he’s stolen out of Scott’s cabinets. Scott’s not asking now. He’s been keeping his cabinets stocked instead.

Scott strips off his own t-shirt and pants, and doesn’t look to his left. He saw Stiles naked earlier, in the showers at the office. He saw the scars spidering out from Stiles’ left shoulder and slashed across his chest. He doesn’t look now, because this isn’t about Scott’s guilt, and it’s not his business. Not until Stiles wants it to be.

There’s a clunk, and Scott glances over--the gun settling down on the wood of the dresser. And then another one, and a clip of ammunition to follow, a knife, another knife, a neat perfect line of weapons Scott technically _knew_ Stiles was carrying, but never saw the least sign of.

Scott _remembers_ the first time Stiles ever held a gun. It was the summer before senior year of college, and Stiles’ dad had sighed that if Stiles really wanted to do this, to come back and spend his life in uniform in Beacon Hills, he might as well learn to do it right. Scott remembers Stiles going down to the range with his dad, and then by himself once they were back at school, preparing with grim determination for his weapons certification with the sheriff’s department. 

After he got his badge and gun, it was a whole year before Stiles stopped walking differently whenever he was armed, before he got used to it. They had a safe in their apartment for when he was off-duty.

There’s a line of weapons on top of Scott’s dresser, and more hidden inside Stiles’ own left arm. Scott’s eyes glow red, not gold, and outside this apartment forests grow from the tops of skyscrapers and millions of people get on with their lives. This is what they’ve got. This is who they are now.

When they were sixteen, Scott’s eyes were always brown and his lungs wouldn’t let him run back and forth across a lacrosse field, and nobody in their right minds would ever let clumsy, hyper Stiles Stilinski _near_ a deadly weapon. They changed before. They can survive changing again.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” Stiles mutters.

“What?” Scott asks. “You’re tired. It’s bed time.” Siri helpfully brightens the clock numbers next to the door: 10:23. “We’ve got it, Siri. Privacy mode. No calls unless it’s an emergency.”

“Goodnight, Scott,” Siri says. “Sleep well.”

“Okay, one, that thing is _seriously creepy_ ,” Stiles says.

“I know, but she came with the apartment,” says Scott. “And she makes some things easier.”

“I just want you to think about the fact that you’re calling it ‘she’,” says Stiles. “And two, oh my god, this is bed time for you? Your coyote is right, you _are_ an old man.”

“I’m two months younger than you,” Scott points out. “And _you’re_ the one who’s tired, and when did you talk to Malia?” The banter is good--Stiles is moving steadily towards the bed, following Scott when Scott shoves the covers back and moves over to make room. Scott gives Stiles the outside, the easy escape route, because he’s not stupid. He hopes it’ll mean that Stiles doesn’t feel like he has to take it.

“I didn’t,” Stiles says, though there’s something funny on his face there, an odd angle to his frown. “You told me she was teasing you last week.”

“I didn’t know you were listening,” Scott says.

Stiles raises his eyebrows and fixes him with such a...god, not a damn person around here would know what a ‘bitch, plz’ look even _is_ , and even ‘bitch’ has dropped a lot in popularity as a word over the past century, but that’s what it is. That’s exactly what it is.

“Seriously,” Stiles says. “When have I _ever_ not listened to you?”

“When I told you you didn’t have to leave,” Scott says. He means every single time over the past six weeks that Stiles has bolted for the door.

“No, I listened to you, I just didn’t do what you wanted me to,” Stiles says. “Slight yet critical difference there.”

Slight difference, in that Stiles has been somebody’s brainwashed slave for the past eighty years and it’s probably really important for him to be able to _not_ do what he’s told. “I know,” says Scott. “It’s fine.”

“And I’m here now, right?” Stiles says, and slumps back against the headboard of the bed.

,,,

Stiles may be tired, but he hasn’t made any motion towards going to sleep. He slumps, like he’s too tired to sit upright or to go through the motions of lying properly down and settling in for the night. He mostly watches the wall, like he’s too tired to focus his eyes anywhere in particular, and he talks like he’s too tired to stop himself.

“How was dinner with Lydia?” Scott asks, somewhere mid-ramble about modern issues with traffic congestion in a high-speed bullet train world.

“God,” says Stiles. “She’s so _different_.”

“Really?” All Scott’s been thinking, for the past year or so, is how grateful he is that Lydia is the one thing the _same_ in this brave new world. “You mean the way she looks?”

“You really don’t see it?” Stiles asks. “She’s not trying to prove anything to anybody any more. And she’s way bossier.”

“Wasn’t Lydia kind of always bossy?” Maybe it’s just blurring together, the old and the new.

“Nah, not like this,” Stiles says. “Can you imagine her trying to dictate terms to Talia? She was just as young and scared as us.”

“And now she’s old.” Maybe Lydia is more used to getting her way, now. She’s earned it. 

“Yeah,” says Stiles. He’s quiet for a few moments, but that’s about as much as Stiles can stay quiet for any day. “She told me about how she saved you.”

“What’d she say?”

People don’t really keep their loved ones lying in comas for eighty years. Not even werewolves who keep breathing just fine, cut off from respirators and feeding tubes and whatever other machines comatose people need to survive, and just _won’t wake up_. Definitely not werewolves injured and poisoned as badly as Scott had been. Scott knew Talia. She’d have ended it quick with her claws and called it a mercy.

Maybe it would’ve been. He wouldn’t have outlived nearly everybody he ever knew like this. But then who would have been here for Stiles? Allison and Malia and the rest of the betas would all be dead, and Stiles would still be out there, under the Benefactor’s control, until somebody managed to finally get the best of him once and for all. And maybe that would’ve been mercy, too.

You don’t let your friend-beta-son linger on like that unless there’s a banshee standing next to the bedside, swearing by everything she holds dear that that comatose werewolf isn’t dead yet, and _will_ be waking up someday. Scott doesn’t think Lydia expected it to be quite so long before the basilisk venom finally worked its way out of his system and stopped trying to burn acid through his veins from the inside out.

“She said you were a shitty houseguest,” Stiles says. “Always laying around all day, never cleaning up after yourself.”

“Oh yeah?” Stiles is warm against Scott’s left side, close, almost still. Scott doesn’t sling an arm around him, doesn’t pull him closer. He just waits.

“She wants me to join your team.”

“We were good tonight,” Scott says. They _were_ , even with the gun, and the window, and those moments Scott wasn’t sure if Stiles or anyone was going to be able to catch up to him or not. “You saved my ass.”

“Scott, I’ve been saving your ass for literally a hundred years,” Stiles says, and there’s that tiny edge of affectionate teasing to it, but mostly he just sounds dull and tired. “It’s kind of habit by now.”

“So work with us,” Scott urges. “Come on. We _need_ you.”

“You and your team of little human betas and your coyote and your Argent?” Stiles snorts. “Still can’t believe you’re working for an _Argent_.”

“She’s not like Gerard.” Scott hadn’t believed it either, when Lydia had first introduced them, but times change. Allison isn’t her family. “You’d like her if you got to know her.”

“God, you’ve got the most ragtag group of would-be do-gooders ever, no wonder you need me. How I didn’t manage to kill you all is a mystery.” Stiles says it lightly. He says it like he means it.

“Stiles, look at me.” Stiles is still staring blankly off into empty space, but this is too important. This is everything. Scott needs to know that Stiles _sees_ him for this, and Scott needs to be able to read the expression on his face.

Stiles turns his head, and his posture and voice have been dull and tired, but his eyes are clear. “Scott, come on--”

“We stopped you,” Scott says. “You’re not going to hurt anyone else. We _stopped_ you.”

Stiles looks at him, eight inches away, his eyes searching Scott’s face for _something_. Scott doesn’t know what he sees.

“You always going to stop me, Scotty?” Stiles asks.

“If I have to,” Scott promises firmly.

“Going to put a bullet through my head if he ever comes looking for me again?” Stiles asks. “If he reactivates his asset?”

There’s been no sign of the Benefactor since Scott brought Stiles back to himself, unless Stiles has had run-ins and not told anybody. It’s possible. Either way, Scott probably isn’t lucky enough for that to last forever.

“No,” says Scott. “Not ever. But I’m not going to let you hurt innocent people again.”

Stiles sighs and leans back against the headboard. With his eyes closed like that, knees tucked up against his chest, he looks sixteen again. Too bad he’s still so much older than he seems.

“You don’t know me as well as you used to, Scott,” he says. “Might not be that easy.”

“And if you think I’m ever giving up on you, then you don’t remember me at all,” says Scott.

…

12:40 AM, by the pale numbers still glowing faintly on the wall. The sounds of the neighbors have all quieted down through the so-called soundproof walls that are like paper to Scott’s werewolf hearing. The lights are off, much as that matters to the two of them, with the glittering reflection of city lights coming in through the window and both of their night vision. They’re not any closer to sleep.

“Do you miss them?” Stiles asks into the dark, a propos of nothing. Scott doesn’t have to ask who.

“All the time,” Scott says. “So much. I missed _you_ so--”

“No,” Stiles interrupts. “Not me. This isn’t about me. Them.”

“Boyd and Erica’s great-granddaughter just had a baby,” Scott says. “Siri’s got pictures. Lydia’s been keeping track.”

“God, can you imagine Erica as a mother?” Stiles asks. “Boyd probably wasn’t too bad.”

“I bet they were great,” Scott says loyally. Erica was a little wild, but she loved hard, and she loved Boyd. She would’ve been fine. “I miss _Talia_.”

“Wish you still had an alpha to go running home to?”

“Sometimes,” Scott admits. “I don’t know why her power came to _me_ \--”

“Wait,” says Stiles. “What? You don’t have Talia’s power.”

“Maybe you’ve noticed this thing where my eyes are red and my bite can turn humans into werewolves?” Scott points out. “Lydia says it went to Laura after Talia died, but then when the hunters killed Laura, nobody else was left to--”

“Scott, you weren’t even Talia’s beta.” Stiles sits upright, firm on this point. “I saw the records, okay, she didn’t die for another eight years after you got yourself _bit by a basilisk_ \--”

“I know, I was stupid,” says Scott. “But maybe by the time Laura died--”

“You’re not listening to me, Scott, you were an alpha _before_ the coma,” Stiles insists. Scott stares.

“No I wasn’t,” he says.

“You were. Your eyes were turning red,” says Stiles. “I _know_ this. I remember this.”

“Stiles, I think I’d remember--”

“Like you remembered me dying?” Stiles demands. “Maybe Peter wiped it from your memory along with everything else, but you were an alpha, Scott. The miracle beta with no alpha of his own. That’s why Peter went after me.”

“It was Peter?” Scott asks, and Stiles snorts in derision.

“God, Scott, who the hell else?”

…

Peter always wanted power. Of course it was him.

He couldn’t kill Talia. He couldn’t ever kill Talia, but a beta who could make his own betas would be as good as an alpha. If only Scott had felt any loyalty, anything other than distrust and a little pity, towards Peter at all.

Of course he hadn’t stopped trying to create his own perfect followers. Scott _knows_ the story Malia doesn’t like telling about herself, the story of ‘if not a beta, why not a daughter?’ Well, if not a beta, why not a soldier?

Peter’s the one who taught Scott to use his claws to sink into somebody’s memories and read them or twist them at will. Of course Peter’s the one who tangled up the inside of Scott’s head that night in the woods, left him with blood on his hands and a wellspring of grief and no body to mourn.

Scott can’t remember. He _knows_ that the images in his head are fake, and knowing, they all go thin and transparent like film negatives--the basilisk slithering through the trees, the way the leaves smoked and started to smolder in its wake, Stiles’ body too limp and still warm, the fire. Maybe now, knowing, Scott can catch a mental glimpse of dark fur or glowing blue eyes instead of scaled hide, but it’s too long ago and too jumbled. It’s a story of a memory rather than something that really happened. Peter did his job well.

Scott’s never killed anybody. Even now, to this day, never one body by his claws. Maybe it’s a good thing Peter’s dead. Peter is worth fucking up a perfect record.

…

“He wanted me out of the way so he could get to you,” Stiles says. “It was always about you for him, Scott. God, he must’ve been so pissed when you got yourself, I repeat, bitten by a goddamn basilisk and thrown into a coma before he could kill you himself, and all he had left was me.”

“Must have been?” Scott asks.

He’s not thinking, and it’s the wrong question. Stiles’ shoulders go tight and his arm, which had been lying relaxed on the mattress, curls back up around his knee reflexively.

“I don’t remember that part,” Stiles says. “Don’t ever ask me to remember that part.”

“No, no, Stiles, I’m sorry.” Scott could kick himself. He could find Peter Hale’s unmarked grave and drag the man out of it just to make sure, for good and forever, that Peter is really and completely dead. He could cry, but he’s not going to do that, either.

“God.” The back of Stiles’ head thunks back against the headboard, and he stares across the ceiling. “God, Peter Hale was a bastard.”

“Yeah.” There’s really nothing to do but agree. “You know he’s actually Malia’s father?” Now that was a familial relationship, not to mention a childhood, that Scott wouldn’t have wished on anybody.

“Wait, seriously?”

“She’s older than she looks,” Scott explains, but that’s not the source of Stiles’ confusion.

“No,” says Stiles. “I mean, yes, she is, but no. That’s why I know her.”

Scott doesn’t think Stiles and Malia have stood in the same room once since he’s gotten his memories back, until today. And before that, the week they’d spent playing cat and mouse with Stiles chasing them all over town, he hadn’t shown Malia any more attention than anyone else. “You _know_ her?”

“I don’t remember her, but I know her,” Stiles says. “Or she knows me. If she even remembers what she knows.”

“Peter fucked up her memories pretty badly,” Scott says. “And then being a coyote for a bunch of years didn’t help.”

“Have you watched her fight?” Stiles asks.

Scott remembers: a dark shape dropping down from on high, rolling and sliding into a perfect, practiced stop, a fast-moving form blurring out of the corner of his eye, exactly where he expects a fast-moving form to be. Hamstrings and pressure points. They use such different weapons that Scott never would have noticed, but he can picture it, now. “She fights like you,” he says.

“Yeah,” says Stiles. “So there’s another unsolved mystery for my past. Add it to the pile.”

Scott hasn’t asked this yet, but tonight seems like the night for asking questions he’s been afraid of. Stiles hasn’t been this _still_ with him before. Whatever happened with Lydia, part of Stiles seems to have given up fighting.

“How much do you remember?” Stiles won’t appreciate it if Scott is too delicate with the question, but at least Scott can try to be gentle. “The past few years?”

“Enough,” says Stiles. “I’d get a list of names, I’d take care of it. Go back to base, magical timeless sleep, wake up somewhere completely different. Same shit, different cities, every day.”

“Is that it?” What had Stiles _done_ when he wasn’t being used as a living weapon? Did he have people to talk to? Allies, friends? Anything?

“I don’t remember the names, if that’s what you’re asking,” and no, that’s not what Scott had been asking at all, but it’s too late, Stiles is already swinging his legs over the side of the bed and standing up. “And one face pleading for mercy kind of looks like all the others after a while.”

“No, Stiles, that’s not what I--” Scott scrambles after him, but Stiles stops halfway to the door, and looks back over his shoulder at him.

“Relax,” Stiles says. “I want one of Laura’s cookies.”

…

Siri starts to bring the lights up when they get out to the hallway, but Scott waves her back down, so in the kitchen Scott sits on the counter and Stiles leans against the sink and they eat home-made cookies by only the thin yellow glow of under-cabinet task lighting.

“If you’re going to ask me, just ask,” Stiles says.

“Why are you still here?” Scott had hoped, for a few minutes, that he could maybe get Stiles to lay down and get some sleep tonight. He hadn’t even pictured them staying awake talking and eating cookies at 1 AM. “What did Lydia say?”

“She said…” Stiles breaks off to pull the refrigerator door open and peer inside. “You’ve got to have milk, right? The real stuff, not that modern substitute.”

“ _Stiles_.” He emerges from the fridge with Scott’s bottle of milk, and doesn’t look at Scott as he sets it down on the counter.

“She said that if you didn’t know me any more, I should try to reintroduce myself again. Do you have a glass or am I just drinking this straight from the container?”

“Stiles, I _know_ you.” Scott slips down off the counter, tries to edge into Stiles’ line of sight.

“Really? No glass?”

“I _know_ you,” Scott repeats, and Stiles looks at him, finally, hollow-eyed and somber.

“No you don’t, Scott,” he says.

“You’re in my apartment in the middle of the night threatening to drink my milk right out of the carton,” says Scott. “That doesn’t sound like two people who don’t know each other to me.”

“Do _you_ know why I’m here?” Stiles asks.

It’s what Scott just asked, isn’t it? “Why don’t you tell me?”

“Because I don’t know, okay?” Stiles demands. “You don’t know who I am. I don’t even know who I am.”

“You’re _Stiles_.” Scott takes a careful step forward, and counts it as a tiny victory that Stiles doesn’t step back. “You’re my best friend. I’ve known you my whole life--” but Stiles is shaking his head, sidestepping away and shaking his head, and Scott freezes where he is.

“No,” Stiles says, “that’s not enough, that’s not _good enough_.”

“You’re still you.” Scott is firm on this. “You’re still Stiles.” No matter what, he’s _always_ going to be Stiles.

“And what the hell,” Stiles asks, “is a Stiles?”

“You asked me that before,” Scott says.

“Yeah?” asks Stiles. “Well I haven’t gotten much of an answer yet.”

“You’re the same person you always were,” Scott says. “You’re _not_ the Winter Soldier.”

“No,” says Stiles. “No see that’s the thing, that’s what you keep doing. You keep trying to act like I’m the same, and I’m not the same, Scott. I’ve done things that guy would’ve died before doing.”

“But it wasn’t _you_ ,” Scott presses. “It was Peter and the Benefactor, it wasn’t you.”

“It was my hands,” says Stiles. “My body.”

“It wasn’t your _choice,_ ” Scott insists.

“But it was _still my actions_ ,” Stiles shoots back, every inch as stubborn and not about to budge. “That’s what you don’t get, Scott. Maybe it wasn’t my idea, but I did those things. All of them. Me.”

“If somebody else was brainwashing and controlling you, then it’s not your fault, Stiles,” says Scott. “It’s just like the nogitsune.”

“The nogitsune?” Stiles takes a few paces away from the counter, and Scott tenses to follow him, but Stiles just turns on his heel, like it’s too much for him right now to be still. “The nogitsune wore me like a meat puppet for three days,” he says. And then, not quite sure, “Right?”

“Exactly,” says Scott. “And nothing it did was your fault.”

“No,” says Stiles. “But you know what it did, when it left, it broke me. It tore a hole in something, or, or it left a door ajar. Something wasn’t the same as it used to be. And two years later, all Peter had to do was walk right in.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re broken, Stiles, it just means you got hurt,” Scott says. “Really, really badly. But that doesn’t change _you_. Remember what Alan used to say? You are what you do, not what happens to you.”

“He took me apart, Scott,” Stiles says.

“And now you’re back,” Scott says. “You remember now. You’re you again.”

“No, Scott, you’re not listening,” Stiles says, “he took me _apart_ , and then he put me back together. The way he wanted me. He couldn’t have his beta, so he made _me_ , okay. Peter and the nogitsune and the Benefactor, they _happened_ to me, and then I _did_. I did everything.”

“That doesn’t make you guilty,” says Scott.

“It’s not about guilt,” says Stiles. “It’s not, but Scott, I’m not you. I didn’t go to sleep and have eighty years of nightmares and then just wake up at the end. It all happened. Nothing, ever, can _ever_ make it not have happened.”

“I know,” Scott says, quietly. He’s been watching the evidence for the past five weeks. He can’t fix it. “Stiles, I know.”

“You are what you do, Scott,” says Stiles. “So who the hell am I now?”

“You’re the guy who didn’t kill me even when he could,” says Scott. “How about that?”

...

There are moments you don’t forget. Scott’s head was swimming from the lack of air, but he remembers the press of Stiles’ hand in an unbreakable steel grip around his throat with perfect, unbreakable clarity.

“What’s the trap?” Stiles demanded, three inches away with wild, too-wide eyes that bore right through Scott like nothing.

“No trap,” Scott rasped out.

“What are you trying to do to me?” Scott could breathe, almost, barely, but Stiles’ face was three inches away from his own, his body close enough to share heat, his heartbeat thundering in Scott’s ears even louder than his own. Stiles stared right through him and didn’t know him, and Scott couldn’t breathe even without the pressure around his throat. “Why aren’t you fighting _back_?”

“Because you’re my best friend,” Scott said. “And I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Stiles said.

“No you won’t,” Scott said, with all the solid, unshakable conviction he could fit into a gasp.

“I could,” Stiles said, and his hand squeezed minutely harder. Scott’s vision was tunneling dark, but he fought to keep his eyes open. “I really could.”

“Then kill me,” Scott said. “Because I’m never going to give up on you until you remember.”

Stiles stared at him with eyes like a tiger whose half-gnawed leg was still caught in an iron trap, fierce and furious and savage and _lost_. Injured animals are the most dangerous animals, and Stiles was absolutely deadly.

He let Scott fall. He let go his grip around Scott’s throat, and Scott fell forward, away from the concrete wall at his back, doubling over and gasping for air. Before Scott could even suck in a whole breath, the blade rammed deep into his stomach, eight inches of sleek metal sliding cleanly right out of the back of Stiles’ hand. 

It didn’t even hurt, for the first two seconds. Scott choked, frozen and pinned by the metal of the knife. He couldn’t breathe and couldn’t move, but it was the shock of feeling cold metal slice right through the center of him, not the pain of it. Then Stiles tilted his arm down and shook, to leave Scott’s body sliding off the blade, falling to the concrete of the alleyway with a wet thunk. Then the pain set in.

Scott closed his eyes and tried not to scream, and by the time he blinked them open again, Stiles was gone. There wasn’t even a flicker of a shadow to say he’d been here, just Scott, gasping in a pool of his own blood, fumbling thick-fingered for his wristband to call for help.

Stiles tried to kill him, and couldn’t. Stiles should’ve killed him and didn’t. Master assassins don’t leave jobs half finished, but Stiles let Scott live.

Nothing else really matters after that.

…

“It’s not enough.” Scott’s never heard Stiles sound quite so weary and defeated. “I have to be more than that. I can’t just be the guy who didn’t kill somebody. That’s not _enough_.”

“It’s a start,” Scott says, and Stiles shakes his head.

“I can’t _think_ when you’re around, Scott. And I can’t stay away, because the only thing I really know for sure about myself is that even brainwashed out of my mind, I’d probably die for you.”

“I don’t want you to die for me,” says Scott. “And I don’t want you just to live for me, either, but at least it’s a _start_.”

“What was I before?” Stiles asks. “Besides your best friend?”

Scott thinks maybe it’s the first time Stiles has _asked_ him about something like that. The first time he’s been willing to admit that maybe he doesn’t know.

“You were a lot of things,” says Scott. “You were a really good son. You were a really good deputy.”

“Yeah,” says Stiles. “Yeah, that was me. Law and order and the American way, right?”

“You weren’t really that big on order,” says Scott, and Stiles smirks.

“Yeah,” he says. “But you’re right, that mattered to me. That was something. That was who I was.” He stretches his left hand--still fidgeting, even with the parts of him that are made out of metal--and it glints softly in the lamplight. “I’m really not a cop now.”

“It’s just a job,” says Scott. “You can still do the same things. You can still protect people.”

“Maybe.” Stiles drops his hand back to his side and rolls his shoulders, almost a shrug. “I remember being the guy with the plan. Was that me?”

Scott can’t list the number of times in the past year he’s _longed_ for one of Stiles’ slightly terrible, really difficult, highly dangerous and improbably successful plans. “That’s you.”

“Thought so.” It doesn’t make Stiles sound any happier. If anything, he’s even more defeated.

“What?” Scott asks. “Stiles, what?”

“Do I look like a guy with a plan to you, Scott?” Stiles asks. “Let me give you a hint: standing in somebody’s kitchen in a pair of borrowed boxers trying to figure out whether or not it’s okay to drink milk without a glass has never been part of _anybody’s_ master plan.”

“You’re just tired, that’s all,” Scott tries, and Stiles rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, for six straight weeks,” he says. “I can’t do it any more. I haven’t been the guy making the plans in eighty years, I’ve just been the weapon they pull out of the tool shed and point in the right direction, and I don’t remember what I’m doing. I mean it when I said I can’t think when you’re around.” Stiles shakes his head ruefully. “Just can’t think when you’re not around, either.”

“Because you’re _tired_ , Stiles.” Scott is sure on this one. Scott _knows_ PTSD--it’s got a new name now, something fancy and French that Scott can never pronounce or remember, but it’s the same thing. They all had it, eighty years ago. They’ve all got it now. Stiles is just a lot worse off right this second, and a lot less practiced in living with it, because his trauma lasted eighty straight years and only ended a month and a half ago. “I don’t just mean one night of good sleep. You need a break, and you need to have somebody else looking out for you for five minutes so you can actually turn off for once.”

“Five minutes isn’t really going to fix this, Scott,” Stiles says, and Scott shrugs.

“How about we start with the rest of tonight?” he offers. “I still have a bed.”

“What, tired of this scintillating look inside the Winter Soldier’s brain?” Stiles asks. “Not that I can blame you.”

“We’re both really tired,” says Scott. “And we’re not going to fix this tonight.”

“I don’t think this _fixes_ ,” says Stiles. “I’m _broken_.”

“So we’ll build something new,” says Scott. “You helped take down those rakshasa today, _without_ killing them. That’s something you did. Maybe that’s who you are now.”

“Yeah, that was for you, you know.”

“I know,” says Scott. “You still did it. And you are what you do, right?”

Stiles just looks at him for a while, with dull, heavy-lidded eyes. Scott waits. He can wait all night.

“This relentless, unfounded optimism,” Stiles says finally. “Have you always been like this, or is this the kind of thing I can opt out of? I’m not sure if I like it.”

“Depends,” says Scott. “Is it working?”

Hopefully he hasn’t just spent the past half hour making Stiles feel even worse. He’ll find a new plan of attack if he has to, one way or another.

A tiny, reluctant version of a real smile--the shadow of something genuine and affectionate that Scott’s rarely seen on Stiles, over their whole life--tugs briefly at the corners of Stiles’ lips and is just as quickly gone. “Maybe,” Stiles admits. “Just a little.”

.

Scott’s alarm clock doesn’t go off the next morning, but he still wakes up early. Half of it’s habit. Half of it’s the fact that Siri kept to his orders all night, and didn’t interfere to draw the blinds or dim the window glass when the sun started to come up, so light has started creeping across Scott’s face and prickling at his eyelids.

Then again it’s probably down to the fact that as soon as Scott starts stirring at all, even just to roll over and shove his face deeper in his pillow, Stiles goes stiff beside him.

“Go back to sleep,” Scott mutters, muffled and probably barely intelligible. He reaches over to sling an arm around Stiles, and isn’t awake enough to think the better of it until the instant his palm touches the tense plane of Stiles’ chest.

Stiles doesn’t react, though, or at least doesn’t flinch away from Scott’s hand. Scott is wide awake now, though, waiting to see what Stiles will do. He should probably move his arm but he doesn’t want to move.

Stiles lays still, a count of three, four, five, before he rolls out from under Scott’s arm and stands up. “Come on,” he says. “You go running this ass-crack-early in the morning, right?”

So they go running. Up to the fifty-seventh floor, both of them in Scott’s not-quite-worn-yet cotton t-shirts and running shorts made out of some sleek, ultra-breathable polymer fabric. Sun spills out over the catwalk running path as they round Lydia’s skyscraper and head over towards the Glenmoor building, where the vampires are surely already in bed for the day.

They both have broader shoulders than they used to and they take up a little more of the path than maybe they should, jogging right next to each other, but it’s early and there aren’t many people coming the other way to mind. Scott starts out slow, easy, but Stiles rolls his eyes and picks up his pace, so Scott speeds up to match him. It’s not quite full werewolf fast, but it would be punishing, for a normal human. Which neither of them are.

They haven’t done this in…Have they _ever_ done this? Have they ever run just like this, no Scott lagging back to pant and catch his breath, no Stiles stuck to the range of normal human limits, no holding back, no outpacing? Nobody’s leading. Nobody’s _chasing_ anybody else.

He spots Kira at their usual place, and she waves, but hangs back when she notices Stiles. Scott will catch up with her later. He’s been meaning to introduce her to Malia for a while now. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about expanding the team for serious.

“So hey,” Scott says, and their feet fall against the slightly-spongy running path in perfect rhythm, “pretty sure breakfast is cookies, because we’ve got about a billion of them still back at my place.”

“Yeah, I saw, what did you, make six batches?” Stiles asks.

He seems better this morning than last night, which might just be because everything seems better out in the sun than it does at 1:00 in the morning. It’s not over. Nothing’s fixed. But right now, Stiles is a person who goes running with his best friend just after sunrise. It’s the start of something.

“Just about,” Scott admits. “Want to help me bring them all in to Allison’s after we eat what we want?”

The great thing about talking while they run is that Stiles can fall silent, and they can both pretend it’s because he’s out of breath. “You don’t need my help to carry a plate of cookies to the elevator,” Stiles says eventually.

“Nope,” agrees Scott.

They bank hard at the sharp turn in the path by the Daily Beacon building and duck under the waterfall spilling down from the sixty-first floor, and the catwalk trembles slightly with the weight of their footfalls. Stiles is still moving, still there at Scott’s shoulder. Scott waits.

“I’m not just going to start--” Stiles lapses quiet again, and Scott keeps waiting. “I’m not _you_.”

“I know,” says Scott. “It’s just cookies.” It’s a _start_. Scott’s willing to take this as slow as they have to, so long as they start.

“What the hell,” says Stiles, and if he sounds mostly resigned, at least he’s so much less _tired_ than he sounded last night. “Let’s do this thing.”


End file.
